Alexander sat calmly waiting for something to happen. Anything. Another wild accusation from the media or Congress would be better than nothing at all, but sometimes waiting was all that could be done. There was one day left before the election, and he had nothing yet that would allow him to turn the tables on the DNC's impeachment tactic. But he had put out a few calls for help. He just had to wait and see if anyone would answer his call.
Mr. President, your wife is here to see you, Abigail interrupted his solemn moment.
Oh? Great. Send her in.
Sehera sauntered through the door like a tall leggy runway model. Her height was a product of good genes and growing up on Mars, where the gravity was a little less than on Earth. That and the long dark hair and the milky white skin gave her an exotic attractiveness that camouflaged her steely, relentless resolve. She had grown up during some really bad times on the red planet and had developed a toughness and an edge that only hard times could create. But, by God, she was beautiful. Moore watched her slim figure swaying back and forth at the hips as her heels click-clacked one in front of the other across the tile of his office.
"Alexander, you've been hiding all day." She smiled playfully and sat in his lap, kissing him.
"If it ain't one thing it's another. What with running the country, fighting off terrorists, and getting impeached and all." He started to grin, but she punched him on the shoulder before he could. "Ouch."
"You need to spend some time with your daughter tonight. She is still shaken up from all this." She leaned in to nibble at Alexander's ear.
"I will as soon as I finish here. I'm waiting on an important call." He wasn't even sure he was going to get that call, but he was too antsy to think about anything else.
"I know, Mr. President," she said playfully again and then nibbled at his ear again. This time she whispered in it. "You need to go for a run and feed the ducks down at King Street."
"Huh?" Moore was startled by the message and a bit unnerved that it had come through Sehera. Why had she been the courier? It didn't matter. He had the message and knew what he had to do.
"I think a long run would ease your mind, Alexander." Sehera smiled at him and kissed him again. "Be discreet."
She smiled at him, and then as coolly as she had entered the room, she slinked out of it. Once the door latched behind her, he thought about what she had said.
Hell, a long run would make me feel better. Maybe I'll sweat all the rest of the damned stims out of my system.
Yes, sir, Abigail agreed.
Get Thomas and Clay in here.
Yes, Mr. President.
It had taken some subterfuge to keep the press off his back. Alexander had ordered Thomas to send the double out in the limo and take it for a ride. To help out with the ruse, Sehera and Deanna rode with the double. That wouldn't bother either of his girls because Alexander knew that it took a hell of a lot more to bother Sehera, and Dee loved any chance she got to play with BIL.
Once the press was thrown off his scent, he dressed in plain civilian workout sweats, a Redskins sweat-wicking toboggan, cap and his running shoes. Nobody would have recognized him from more than a few meters away. He also had Thomas and Clay dress incognito as well. Thomas met him in the gym in similar gear but had armor on underneath his sweatshirt. The sergeant was wearing shorts and a Marine Corps T-shirt.
"Clay, don't reckon you'll get cool, do you? It'll be fifty degrees out there tonight," Alexander asked the marine.
"Marines don't get cold, sir, they just get angry at Mother Nature for being so damned hard to kill, sir."
"We need to get moving, boys. The limo is going to pick us up in Alexandria, right?" Moore looked at his watch.
"Yes, sir."
"I really don't like you going out on these types of excursions, Mr. President," Thomas told him.
"I understand, Thomas. But under the circumstances, I have no choice."
The three of them slipped out of the White House using various passageways that the Secret Service had kept out of the public eye for centuries. Once they were outside the grounds, they jogged Constitution Avenue westward to Twenty-third Street. From there, they jogged south around the Lincoln Memorial and then turned back west, crossing the Potomac on the Arlington Memorial Bridge. On the Virginia side of the river, they wound through Lady Bird Johnson Memorial Park until they could hook up with the Mount Vernon Trail.
The trail was full of joggers, walkers, and cyclists going in either direction. Alexander led them south past the airport at an even nine- minute-mile pace. They had already covered more than two miles, and Alexandria was still a couple to go.
Abigail, how about some running music?
What mood are you in, sir?
Whatever you think. Just none of that stuff that Dee listens to.
Yes, Mr. President. A modern version of a classic Martian fusion rock song played in his head. Moore hummed along to it, keeping his head down, and focused on his running pace. Thomas was beside him, in the middle of the lane, and Clay was right behind him with each step.
Thirty minutes or so more of the running brought them far enough south that they were approaching King Street. Moore stopped at the docks outside the seafood restaurant and noticed the ducks swimming around in the river.
"Clay, why don't you step inside the food court and get us some sports drinks?"
"Sir, I'd really feel nervous letting you out of my sight," the big marine growled.
"Yes, sir. Clay and I need to stay close to you. This isn't really a good idea," Thomas added. "Mr. President, sir, I am not comfortable at all with this. We really shouldn't be here without backup and prescreening the area," Thomas cautioned as his eyes continually scanned the park to their north and the alleyways on either side of them that led up to the dock and pier at the end of King Street. Alexander could see how nervous the two bodyguards were.
"Relax, boys. Nobody knows we're here or recognizes us, and besides, this is Old Town Alexandria, so we'll be fine. If the terrorists wanted me dead, I'd be dead already. That damned bot Sienna Madira could have blown me up as soon as I got into range of her. And it didn't. Think about it." President Moore leaned against aging-wood safety rails along the pier to watch the ducks swimming in the Potomac. The ducks quacked at each other and swam up underneath him, hoping that he would toss them some breadcrumbs.
"Yes, sir. Never really thought about it that way, with all the shootin' and others getting killed and stuff, sir." Thomas gave a look to Moore that was boardering on being too familiar for a bodyguard's address to the president.
"Sorry, fellas, I've got nothing for you." Alexander laughed at the ducks and wiped at the sweat on his brow. "Now, Clay, go get us some drinks; I'm dehydrated."
Moore kept his back to the two marines-turned-Secret Service and waited. The ducks were entertaining for a few minutes and to some degree even comical. He wished that Dee were there with him to see them. One mallard seemed to be the alpha of the group. Whenever he bullied his green head through the others, they spread out and let him pass.
"There's one in every bunch," he muttered to himself.
"Sir, your drink." Clay held out the bottle.
"Thanks." He took it and twisted the cap off. The cool, green, thick drink went down easily, revitalizing him. He finished off the drink and then tossed it at a black metal mesh garbage can a few meters away. The bottle bounced off the rim of the can and fell to the ground. "Shit."
"Sir, somebody is coming." Thomas nodded his head upriver placing a hand behind his back to his blaster.
"Take it easy, Thomas," the president said calmly.
A man dressed in a rather average-looking suit and tie approached them cautiously. The lighting on the pier was a bit low for the two Secret Service agents to figure out who he was at first.
"Mr. President, I hate that this is the way we have to meet, but we most definitely didn't need any press." The man looked around in a full circle as if looking for cameras. "I almost didn't recognize you. That is a good cover, sir."
"You think so? Hmmm. I dunno, Senator, everybody knows I'm a Skins fan," President Moore replied with a sly grin. "Now let's have it. What is this all about, Hardin?" He held out his hand and shook Senator Hardin Madira's hand familiarly.
"All you need to know is on this patch," Hardin said, handing Alexander a small, flexible memory tab about the size of a dime. Moore took the patch and stuck it behind his left ear.
Abigail, download and store all information from this patch.
Yes, Mr. President.
And go through it all. Get me a summary quickly.
Already working it, sir.
"So what is this going to cost me, Hardin?" President Moore asked.
"My district in Wyoming needs some economic revitalization. With the Martians gone, somebody needs to do the terraforming systems manufacturing. I want it. I'm earmarking seventy billion for it, and I don't want it cut in a line-item veto."
"You think you can get an earmark that size through both houses?"
"I can if you can convince a couple of your brethren from Mississippi to vote with me."
"I can put in a few good words. Maybe twist some arms. Yeah," Moore said.
I've got the summary for you, sir.
Let me see it.
Here it is. Moore started to scan through the summary that Abigail had developed from the data.
"You're giving me the election, Hardin."
"Well, that's politics. You're giving me a reelection in return." There were always several meanings to every political move. Moore would have to watch himself closely around the senator. Who knows what else he might want in the future. But for now, this was good enough. It would take one phone call to Amaka Chi to put a stop to the entire affair.
"Good enough, Hardin," he said, nodding approvingly. "Good enough."
"In surprise to everyone from Sol to the Oort Cloud today, the impeachment hearings of President Moore were brought to an abrupt halt. The attorney general today released evidence that indeed the blueprints for the QMT-4 teleportation technology were leaked to the press, but not by the White House. It turns out that the blueprints were altered and then leaked to the press by the FBI as part of a sting operation to uncover a double agent in the Department of Energy laboratories at Los Alamos. The sting operation was ongoing and classified in a compartment that the Tau Ceti Commission was not privy to. So, they reached the conclusion that real information had been leaked. Apparently none had been. The interesting question that was left lingering was if the leaked information was false, how did the Separatists develop the quantum membrane teleportation technology? The attorney general replied that just because the Separatists are fanatics does not mean that they don't have smart scientists working for them also.
"This news and the replay of footage from the president's speech this morning, where he introduced heroes from the terrorist attacks and from the now unclassified raid on the terrorist facility in the Oort Cloud, has flipped the polls completely. All of the polls now have President Moore taking both Orlando and Luna City, giving him more than enough votes for reelection. It seems now that all that is left to do is vote."
"She wants to see you, Alexander." Sehera sat down beside her husband on the couch in the media room. He was watching the news on every channel at once and was grinning, as he would say, like an opossum.
"What about?" Dee hadn't been in a very talkative mood the night before when he kissed her forehead and told her good night. The last couple of days had been a lot to handle. Maybe now she had reached the point where she was ready to talk about it. Alexander didn't know, but at least she wanted to talk about something.
"I'm not sure, but she wants you." Sehera took the remote from her husband and started flipping the side screens off, leaving just the one larger screen in the middle projecting. Then she started scanning the guide for programming that she fancied. "Well, go."
"All right." Moore sighed and rose slowly to his feet. He was a little sore from his long run the day before. He had been running but hadn't run that far that fast in a few weeks. He stretched his ankles and flexed his toes and then limped slightly to the doorway. By the time he reached the door, the soreness had loosened up enough for him to walk normally. "Shit, I'm getting old."
Down the hall and to the right was Dee's room. She had lived there for four years now, and Alexander had watched her grow from a child to the terror she was today. He tapped lightly at her door a few times.
"Princess, can I come in?"
"Come in, Dad," she said. Dee was ready for bed and sitting up against the headboard, reading. Moore looked at the book with some interest. The cover of it had popular science drawings of modern military mecha and weapons.
"Some light reading, baby?"
"Uh, no. I'm just educating myself on all the mecha that I've seen." Deanna set the book down and looked up at her father. "Dad?"
"What, baby?"
"I'm not a baby, Dad."
"I know, princess. But you'll always be my baby." Moore smiled.
"Uh, Dad." Dee frowned at him the way kids do when they reach that age where they don't want to be called a baby.
"What do you need? Are you okay?
"Oh, sure. I wanted to ask you about the future. Do you think you will win the election?"
"It looks like it. Is that what's bothering you?"
"No. I was just wanting to tell you that I want to be like you when I grow up." Dee looked up at him seriously.
"Oh? You think you want to be president of the United States?" he asked her proudly.
"No, Dad. Yuck, politics is gross." Dee made a sour face.
"Then I don't understand what you mean." Alexander shrugged his shoulders, holding his hands palms-up.
"I want to be a marine."
"Well, what do you expect?" Sehera looked at Alexander. "She has watched you running around in e-suits fighting off tanks with your bare hands since she was really little. You're her hero."
"Yeah?" Alexander's chest swelled a bit.
"Yeah. And mine too." Sehera leaned against him and the two of them sank into the couch under the weight of their lives. "You never did tell me what Hardin gave you."
"Oh that," Moore laughed. "You'll never believe this, but our clever Mrs. Amaka Chi was making deals with some DOE scientists to leak information to the public in a way that she could use to set me up. She thought of it all by herself, too."
"Really?"
"Of course not. Several of the DNC and the Indies were in on it, and the Tau Ceti Commission was nothing but a bunch of witch hunters, bound and determined to find a witch. And when they didn't find one, well, they manufactured one."
"How did Hardin know this?" Sehera raised an eyebrow, more interested in the story now.
"He was part of it," Alexander replied.
"Why'd he help out, then?"
"He says it's for a trade on some earmarks in his district, big earmarks. But you know that can't be all." Moore frowned and hugged his wife to him closer.
"Yeah. He's a puppet. He's working some greater plan angle that he has no idea about. It's his master that has the agenda."
"Which reminds me, I have a meeting in the Oval Office in thirty minutes." Those meetings in the Oval Office in the middle of the night were the ones he never liked.
"Good luck." Sehera kissed him slowly while hugging him tight to her. "Watch your back."
"Right." Moore sighed and sat quietly holding his wife for the next few minutes and trying not to think about anything in particular. That was hard to do.
Alexander closed the door behind him and then toggled the switch to lower the blinds on the other side of the office. He locked the door's manual bolt and then keyed the electronic lock.
Abigail, sweep the room for transmitters.
We're clean, sir.
Set up the jamming fields.
They're on. Nobody will be eavesdropping on you.
Good. Unlock my desk.
Yes, sir. Abigail transmitted the encrypted symbol sequence to unlock the president's desk. A faint click and turning of a mechanism could be heard, and then the middle drawer of his desk slid open about a centimeter.
Alexander sat down at his desk, plopping tiredly into his chair. The legs of the chair barked against the floor, as his weight pushed it backward. He reached to the lower right-hand drawer of his desk and slid it open. He pulled out two glasses and a bottle of Maker's Mark that he kept there for certain stressful occasions. This was one of those. He filled one of the tumblers about three fingers deep and then swigged hard at the liquor.
Then he reached back into the drawer and pulled out a small lockbox. Abigail cycled the lock on it, and the top opened like a jewelery box. Inside it was only one small, oval object with a green button on the underside of it. He set the object on the floor and then depressed the green button.
Moore swiveled his chair around to relax and stare out of the one- way blinds over the window of the Oval Office for a second or two. He filled both glasses this time and continued to stare out the window, but his moment of relaxation was interrupted by a faint, crackling hiss sound that was coming from behind him, followed by a short burst of white light. Without turning to see the cause, President Moore sighed again and then put on a fake smile—an M-space teleportation, directly to the Oval Office.
"You shouldn't be here, Elle; someone could be watching." He scanned around the office nervously. Abigail was good and had assured him that they were safe, but someday, some group of AICs would marry and build an even smarter one than she was. He couldn't be too careful.
"Relax, Alexander, you've got the dampening field on. Nobody will see or hear a thing. If they do, I'll take care of it." Ahmi was wearing her mask as usual. She slipped it over her face and then set it down on Moore's desk. Without asking, she picked up the drink and began taking long draws from it. "I like what you've done with my office."
"Right."
"I see you managed to escape an election disaster," the Separatist leader said, and plopped down onto the president's sofa.
"Yes, I did. It was just an overzealous congresswoman from Nigeria trying to make a name for herself. We all have skeletons, you know, and the lovely Mrs. Amaka Chi didn't want hers to go public. Especially since it would have ruined the Dems for years."
"So I suppose Hardin gave you the information you needed?" Again Ahmi drank from her tumbler, this time emptying it.
"I knew it was you behind that." Moore despised the murdering terrorist even if she had been Sienna Madira. In his mind, she couldn't still be that great person. But he had discovered thirty years before that her plan was too embedded to buck with a frontal assault. He had to play along and bide his time. "What was the deal with Luna City and Disney World for Christ's sake?" Moore asked.
"I had an election to win. If the people of the system saw their beloved Magic Kingdom, the place they grew up fantasizing about, threatened by crazed terrorists, they would turn their attention from their daily pop culture long enough to watch a stalwart hero bounce in and save the day. I knew I could count on my marine. But I hadn't counted on you blowing up my ship before it hit Luna. That was clever. And I don't recall any plans to attack my Oort Cloud facility."
"I had an election to win," Moore said, dryly.
"My way would have assured us that Luna City didn't vote against you."
"My way did assure that Luna City would vote for me." Moore offered her another drink, but she declined. He topped his tumbler off again.
"Tell my daughter that her father is dead," Ahmi said out of the blue. There appeared to be a twinge of sadness to her voice. But Moore couldn't be certain.
"What happened?"
"He betrayed me. So, I shot him between the eyes with a railpistol."
"Sehera will be sad to hear that." Alexander gulped. She had said it so nonchalantly.
"It was the only logical solution. How is my granddaughter?"
Safe, no thanks to you, you crazy bitch, he thought.
Amen.
"She wants to be a marine."
"Ha. The apple didn't fall far, did it, son?"
"No," he said. I'm not your fucking son, he thought.
"Well, kiss her for me. Maybe one day I'll get to meet her."
Not if I have anything to say about it.
Me either. Too bad you can't just kill her now.
We've talked about that, Abigail.
I know, sir. It would destabilize the Separatists' union beyond recovery. I'm the one who did the simulations. I recall.
Patience. Her day will come.
"So, our plans for Tau Ceti haven't been compromised?" President Moore said, hoping to hurry this meeting along.
"No, darling." Elle stood and patted Alexander on the head like an elder family member would a child.
"Sehera's gonna want to know what you did with her father's body." Moore had met Sehera's father once while he was in the POW camp during the Martian Desert Campaigns, but that didn't count as meeting him as much as it did wanting to rip his fucking throat out. But he was his wife's father, nonetheless.
"I spread his ashes over Madira Valley on the planet Ares. Poor Scotty, I'll miss him dearly." She picked her mask up from the president's desk and slid it over her head, pulling her long, black hair up through the hole in the back of it, tying it into a ponytail.
"I'll let her know."
"Be prepared, Alexander. You got away with your heroics this time. And you can keep the base in the Oort. I have other means of getting here now."
"Yes, about that. How did you teleport a ship forward without a quantum connected platform on this end?"
"We all have our secrets, Alexander. You have yours. I have mine. Heroics are good and will win elections, but . . ." She paused and poked Alexander in the chest with her finger. "You be careful how you interact with my plans. The last person to fuck with my plans just had his ashes spread over a rain forest. Family connections will only get you so far." She smiled and retracted her gloved finger and then depressed a sequence of buttons on her wristband, activating the QMT projector snap-back algorithm. Then the Separatist tyrant and once-great president vanished with a crackling hiss and a flash of light.
"Goddamn, that bitch is crazy." He snatched up the oval device and shut off the quantum membrane beacon and then stowed it away with his Maker's Mark, but not before he took another swig from the bottle.
Abigail? Moore wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sat down.
Yes, Mr. President?
Don't ever let me get that fucking crazy.
Not a chance, Mr. President. Somebody has to stop her.
You're goddamned right we do.